Te Omanga Hospice

The Hutt City Council set a 2018 deadline to strengthen the Woburn Rd hospice, which is actually four different buildings joined together.

It sits on land that has the potential for liquefaction and it is also too close to Opahu Creek.  Most of the structure is below 33 per cent of code.

Insurance and having to restrict the use of some areas of the building were major problems that had influenced the decision to demolish it, chief executive Biddy Harford said. Ironically, it suffered no damage in last week's big shake. "It did really, really well. I was actually amazed."

The decision to demolish was not an easy one to make, she said, but having a safe building had to be a priority in a medical facility. There were not enough single rooms, and having patients and their families sharing rooms was not ideal.

A wide range of options were considered, including moving to a new site, but knocking the building down and rebuilding on the current site ticked all the boxes, she said.

Raising $10m would be a big challenge for the hospice, which runs on an annual budget of $6.5m. It receives $4m from the Government and raises $2.5m from the public. Fundraising would begin in the new year.

The rebuild was expected to take 18 months, during which palliative services would be based in an aged care facility. Te Omanga Hospice opened in September 1979 in Bloomfield Tce. In the years since, it has occupied a number of sites before moving to Woburn Rd in 1991.